The Prague Sonata
Oct. 1st, 2019 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: The Prague Sonata, by Bradford Morrow
I try to read something musical during the Proms season, but this remained hidden on my bookshelf at a critical moment and it got missed until after the end of the season. In any case, I wasn't really sure what to expect: I feared disappointment.
Meta Taverner is a musicologist working in New York; a career as a concert pianist was cut short by an injury. A friend telephones her shortly after her thirtieth birthday, giving her the name and address of an elderly lady and encouraging her to make a visit. The lady, a Czech immigrant, shows her what appears to be an eighteenth century manuscript, the middle movement of a piano sonata, and tells her the story of how it came to be separated from its companion movements during World War II. Meta is intrigued by the music, and entrusted with the manuscript and the quest to reunite the work. The novel proceeds to Prague, where she makes friends and enemies, discovers old stories, rivalries and multiple layers of history, before ultimately concluding back in America.
The story is well told and carries enough authenticity in the way it references composers, musical and research techniques, and also for the way it paints Czech and Slovak history through the twentieth century. Confusingly but necessarily, the story is spliced together from several timelines, which trace back to the mid-nineteenth century. It felt a bit long-winded at times, and one episode in the middle did feel rather predictable, but on the whole, I enjoyed it.
I try to read something musical during the Proms season, but this remained hidden on my bookshelf at a critical moment and it got missed until after the end of the season. In any case, I wasn't really sure what to expect: I feared disappointment.
Meta Taverner is a musicologist working in New York; a career as a concert pianist was cut short by an injury. A friend telephones her shortly after her thirtieth birthday, giving her the name and address of an elderly lady and encouraging her to make a visit. The lady, a Czech immigrant, shows her what appears to be an eighteenth century manuscript, the middle movement of a piano sonata, and tells her the story of how it came to be separated from its companion movements during World War II. Meta is intrigued by the music, and entrusted with the manuscript and the quest to reunite the work. The novel proceeds to Prague, where she makes friends and enemies, discovers old stories, rivalries and multiple layers of history, before ultimately concluding back in America.
The story is well told and carries enough authenticity in the way it references composers, musical and research techniques, and also for the way it paints Czech and Slovak history through the twentieth century. Confusingly but necessarily, the story is spliced together from several timelines, which trace back to the mid-nineteenth century. It felt a bit long-winded at times, and one episode in the middle did feel rather predictable, but on the whole, I enjoyed it.